Community-based Climate Change Action Grants Program
Vietnam Low Carbon Rice Project in the Mekong Delta
of Vietnam (An Giang and Kien Giang provinces)
Project Design Document
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)
Vietnam Low Carbon Rice Project
Proposal to AusAID
Submitted by Richie Ahuja, Asia Regional Director
International Climate Program, Environmental Defense Fund
, (512) 691-3403
31 July 2012
1. Executive Summary
The Vietnam Low-Carbon Rice Project (VLCRP) aims to help address two urgent global priorities: (1) reducing worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) far below their business-as-usual trajectory in order to avoid dangerous climate change, and (2) enabling poor and near-poor rice farmer populations in developing countries to improve their standards of living. Cultivation of rice – the world’s most-widely consumed food – releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere, thus contributing to climate change. Fortunately, there are techniques for reducing GHG emissions from rice cultivation, many of which can also directly benefit the small-holder rice farmers who are the primary producers of rice in Vietnam and around the world. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and our Vietnamese partners in government, academia and community organizations have initiated VLCRP to help address these priorities.
VLCRP seeks to significantly reduce GHG emissions from rice cultivation in a way that:
Ø decreases production costs and enhances yield, thus improving farm profitability
Ø provides supplemental farmer income
Ø provides additional short- and long-term co-benefits to the environment, including improving resilience to climate change
To achieve these goals, we will work with small-holder rice farmers in An Giang and Kien Giang provinces of the Mekong Delta to change the way they cultivate their rice crops by applying the “1 Must + 6 Reductions”[1] farming technique. By reducing seed density, water, fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide, farmers will lower both input costs and the release of two separate GHGs (methane and nitrous oxide). The decreased cost of farm inputs should improve farm profitability. And by rigorously quantifying GHG emission reductions, VLCRP will generate “carbon credits” that can then be sold to offset GHG emissions elsewhere, generating funds that are returned to participating farmers, thereby increasing their incomes.
VLCRP is a novel project for Vietnam that will improve the livelihoods of rice farmers and build community capacity. This pilot is intended to be fully replicable and designed for scaling up to improve rice production and develop emission factors for different production systems across different agro-economic zones.
2. Situation Analysis
Worldwide, rice cultivation accounts for about the same fraction of human-caused GHG emissions as does the nation of Australia.[2] Vietnam is the second largest rice exporter in the world, providing around 16% of the world’s milled rice exports,[3] and approximately 31% of the country’s overall GHG emissions result from rice cultivation.[4] Most rice cultivation occurs in the Mekong Delta whose 3.9 million hectares (ha) account for 12% of Vietnam’s total land area; about 1.8 million ha of delta land are devoted to rice production. Since 2005, the delta has annually produced about 20 million tons of paddy rice, which accounts for 53% of total rice production and 90% of the rice exported by Vietnam.[5] The Vietnamese government’s National Strategic Vision to 2030 for rice production and food security recognizes the Mekong Delta as crucial to food security, both for Vietnam and the world. However, rice production in the region faces growing threats from climate change, including drought, submergence due to sea-level rise and an accompanying increase in salinity. Until recently, Vietnam’s chief focus for agriculture as related to climate change centered on adaptation. But in mid-2011, the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development (MARD) announced that Vietnam would seek to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural production by 20% by the year 2020. (Overall, 51% of Vietnam’s GHG emissions are from agriculture.)[6]
In 2010, VLCRP was launched to evaluate and begin implementing mitigation opportunities for Vietnam’s rice sector, building upon the experience of low-carbon farming projects undertaken by EDF and its partners in China, India and the United States. The project is the first in Vietnam to use international-standard methods to measure GHG emissions from rice cultivation in typical conditions in farmers’ fields. In addition to EDF, initial partners in the VLCRP included Can Tho University’s Mekong Delta Development Research Institute (MDI), the An Giang Department of Agriculture & Rural Development (AG DARD), and the Advanced Lab of Can Tho University (CTU) and Water Resources University (WRU). EDF provided technical assistance and initial funding for the project’s start up phase. In November 2010, the project was implemented in 100 hectares in An Giang province for the winter-spring crop. For the summer-fall crop in 2011, the project was extended to 250 hectares in An Giang and 140 hectares in Kien Giang province (at which time the Kien Giang Department of Agriculture & Rural Development joined the initiative).[7]
Preliminary results have been encouraging. To date, VLCRP has successfully recruited institutional partners and 300 farmer households. The project has developed methods and materials for training participating farmers and scientists to collect and analyze relevant data. Research in the literature is also promising, reporting that alternative wetting-drying water management can yield GHG reductions by an estimated 30 % compared to traditional wet-irrigation practices where fields remain continuously flooded for the growing season.[8] The establishment of institutional/farmer participation and methodologies, as well as promising data trends, form a solid foundation for the project to be funded through this grant.
AusAID funding will support a 2.5 year pilot project building on VLCRP’s successful 2010-12 start-up phase. (See details in Section 3.3 Project Strategy, ii.) Two EDF senior scientists who have substantial experience working on EDF’s other international low-carbon farming project have been working closely with VLCRP partners to ensure the international standard on GHG emissions measurement, data processing and all protocols are in place. Despite variations in local economies, conditions and cultures in other parts of Vietnam, this pilot will create a transferable model with a set of draft protocols that can be used to improve small-farmer rice production while developing emission factors for different production systems across different agroeconomic zones. While adoption of standards for a compliance market is beyond the scope of this pilot project, the draft protocol and third-party standards can provide a useful starting point as governments adopt standards for credits used for compliance purposes.
VLCRP generates distinct development, environmental and climate co-benefits. First, changes in rice cultivation practices not only reduce the input costs of materials and labor, but will improve crop yield, and thereby farm profitability. New practices should reduce water use and improve water use efficiency, thus reducing crop susceptibility to anticipated upstream changes in hydrology driven by both engineering and climate change. In addition, precision-fertilizer techniques may reduce nitrogen runoff into the Mekong Delta.[9]
Anticipated climate benefits result from changing paddy-rice cultivation practices to manage releases of two separate gases: methane and nitrous oxide. Both methane and nitrous oxide are produced by soil microbes in rice fields – methane by decomposing organic material under flood conditions and nitrous oxide by metabolizing fertilizer and manure nitrogen compounds as paddies are drained. Methane and nitrous oxide are potent greenhouse gases: they respectively trap heat an estimated 23 and 310 times more effectively than CO2 when considered over a 100 year timeframe (which is the standard frame of reference). Over a 20-year timeframe, however, methane has an even stronger warming impact, estimated as 70 times that of CO2 (its lower 100-year warming impact is due to its relative short lifetime in the atmosphere). Methane emission reductions are thus a particular priority.
Reduction of GHG emissions from changing rice cultivation practices will produce additional development benefits derived from the sale of “carbon credits.” These credits are a valuable commodity that can generate additional income for participating farmers and stimulate local economies. Carbon credits can be quantified and verified, then used to offset GHG emissions elsewhere. Initial buyers of VLCRP credits will likely include philanthropists or governmental entities from Vietnam or elsewhere who are interested in promoting low-carbon agriculture that benefits poor and near-poor farmers. In the medium term, however, a much larger number of buyers will emerge: businesses that are obliged to limit their own emissions under national or state regulatory programs. Such programs are now in operation in the European Union and New Zealand, and take effect in California and Quebec, Canada in January 2013. Both Australia and South Korea have recently adopted legislation mandating creation of such programs by 2015, and other nations are actively considering them as well. Depending on decisions made by policymakers, these programs can allow businesses to meet a portion of their compliance obligation by offsetting some of their emissions with carbon credits purchased elsewhere.[10]
EDF and our partners believe that VLCRP’s work to reform rice cultivation practices in the country will demonstrate a “triple win” for Vietnam and beyond, integrating farm economics, environmental benefits and climate mitigation. VLCRP aims to build capacity, skills and economic benefits beyond those currently provided by government for the grass-root rice farmer community, local authorities, extension system and scientists beyond those currently provided by government. These include training in “1 Must + 6 Reductions;” collection of on-farm GHG emissions samples from VLCRP’s experimental and control sites; laboratory analysis of those samples; collection of demographic and agro-economic data from participating farmers, including data on poverty and gender; statistical analysis of these data; and synthesis of data into findings of significance to participating farmers and to policymakers in the participating communities, at the national level, and indeed for many rice-growing regions worldwide.
Through VLCRP, EDF will greatly expand our understanding of the culture and practices of small-holder rice farming communities, providing practical lessons that will be invaluable in shaping the design and implementation of this and other low-carbon agricultural projects. The project will establish and coordinate a strong group of stakeholder advocates to share results of this pilot to drive national and local policy reform and support Vietnamese government’s commitment to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural production 20% by 2020. The project also paves the way for small-holder rice farmers to access carbon markets in order to earn supplemental income.
With the exception of the new AusAID-funded Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) project, we know of no other low-carbon rice farming project in Vietnam currently being planned or implemented other than VLCRP. We look forward to working closely with SNV to share learning as they implement System of Rice Intensification program. While the government in Hanoi is currently exploring mitigation strategies around agriculture with organizations including International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Bank and Asian Development Bank, these discussions have not evolved to field activities to the best of our knowledge.
VLCRP will address issues of gender inequity through the creation of a database that will inform activities to improve equity in the target populations. We expect these activities to be implemented in late 2013-14. (See Sections 3.2 (Expected Outcome 6), 3.4 (Consideration of Marginalized Individuals) and 8 (Gender Equality)).
3. Project description
3.1 Objectives
The Vietnam Low Carbon Rice Project (VLCRP) is a pilot project designed to achieve three objectives:
· Improve community livelihood by training small-holder rice farmers in agricultural practices that decrease production costs, maintain or improve yields, provide environmental co-benefits and create additional income streams from sales of carbon credits.
· Demonstrate a community level pilot that (1) trains small-holder rice farmers to document changes in agricultural practices that reduce GHG emissions and (2) allows them to selling resulting carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market
· Build stakeholder and community capacity for scaling up the project and for transitioning to a broader array of sustainable funding sources over time; this includes the dissemination of project results by stakeholder advocates to policy makers for broader adoption of the approach
The pilot project is designed to provide a scalable model for low-carbon rice cultivation practices that can be adapted for application in other regions of Vietnam and that will be potentially transferable to rice-production in other developing countries. Adoption of these techniques has the potential to improve the lives of participating farmers while simultaneously reducing emissions of GHGs from rice cultivation by an estimated 30%.[11] At scale, the program will advance long-term development objectives by providing additional income to participating farmers that can in turn stimulate local economic activity.
The project builds farmer and local community capacity. Small scale rice farmers in VLCRP will participate in community needs assessments, organization and planning. Agencies at the provincial and district levels will provide primary support for project implementation, management of project sites and monitoring of rice farmer practices by farmer organizations. Agencies at the community level will develop farmer organizations. EDF, MDI and Advanced Lab will serve as lead technical partners to develop and standardize farming techniques, GHG emissions measurement technologies, analysis and extrapolation, and guide community needs assessments and development activities.
In addition to producing farmer-community and GHG benefits, VLCRP advances two AusAID objectives by: (1) furthering Vietnam’s human resource development, through partnerships with Vietnamese universities and research institutions, by providing training and education to local scientists, extension workers and rural populations through extensive data collection and analysis, and actual implementation of low-carbon rice practices, and (2) protecting the natural resources of the Mekong Delta by reducing use of water and synthetic fertilizer.
2. Expected Outcomes
We expect the following outcomes by the end of 2014:
1. Documentation of near-term benefits to farmers
1200 small-holder rice farmers will learn “1 Must + 6 Reductions” agricultural techniques that will provide savings in fertilizer, seed, water and labor. Participants will be trained in methods for data collection, and will record their results in farmer diaries for subsequent analysis.
2. Documentation of environmental co-benefits of low-carbon agriculture
By gathering baseline data and comparing it with farmer diaries and interim data collected during the project, we will document the economic and environmental co-benefits of using low-carbon farming techniques in rice cultivation. These data, when combined with mitigation benefits, make such initiatives compelling for many potential funders, whether those funders are carbon-credit buyers, governments or traditional philanthropic entities.